I am developing live material with my ESX (and EMX if I can fix a problem), and I am wondering what audiences like. I'd have to drive a few hours to reach any kind of electronic music scene, so I don't have much experience to draw on. The question I have right now is, does the audience want a reliable bpm for dancing, or do they prefer some variety?

I would think you'd want to vary it somewhat, so as not to become monotonous. That said, you'll have to work carefully so as to be too jarring when you change up the tempo. Once wouldn't be bad, provided you build up to it, but most of the time, I'd say speed it up or slow it down over a period of a few measures.

Here's one way to do it. She uses an EMX, too. It's a bit jarring at first, but then the tempo settles in and it makes perfect sense.

Thanks for the input. A gradual change is what I have been considering, although I have not tested it to see how stretched samples will react. Perhaps for the transitional patterns I will just use one shots and keyboard parts.

It depends on the crowd , where your playing and how you want to approach your live set.Varied I find is good and more interesting, a locked bpm is good and can be tuned live, and adjusted to the crowd which is handy, but it can also give you problems if some patterns you want to play don't sound to good at certain bpm's, but you can always adjust live. The last live sets i've played with 2 electribe 2's, have had no bpm lock, and a few bpm jumps, crowd loved it but some patterns may not sound that great at certain bpm's (samples mainly) But long as you check things over, etc, (time slicing samples is handy on the sampler) you'll be fine.

Really depends, but i'd say in general best to have it varied, for variation, and feeling the crowd.